Gian Giacomo Medici

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Gian Giacomo Medici, Il Medeghino, in a 16th-century engraving

Gian Giacomo Medici (c. 1495 - 8 November 1555) was an Italian condottiero, duke of Marignano and marquess of Musso and Lecco in Lombardy.

[edit] Biography

Gian Giacomo Medici was the brother of Giovanni Angelo Medici, who was later to be elected Pope as Pius IV. They were scions of an impoverished though patrician family of Milan not connected with the Medici of Florence, in spite of the Medici heraldic palle appearing in the contemporary engraving (illustration): thus Gian Giacomo's nickname Il Medeghino, the "little medico".

Gian Giacomo, the eldest of fourteen children, was banished from Milan after a daring murder of revenge in broad daylight. He fled to Lake Como where he gathered about him a band of brigands answerable to none but him. He threw in his lot as bodyguard to the future Duke of Milan, Francesco II Sforza, reinstated in Milan by Emperor Charles V. The Medeghino gained a reputation for unscrupulous violence in the Sforza pay; in partial recompense, he was made Marquis of Marignano on 28 March 1528 (by Imperial patent and confirmed by Francesco Sforza II, Duke of Milan), and also Marquis of Musso and Lecco.

Medici's bronze portrait, from his grave.

Il Medeghino became a famous condottiere, or soldier of fortune, who fought in the pay of Charles V at the Battle of Mühlberg and elsewhere in Italy (the "War of Siena"), in the Wars of Religion in France and in the Low Countries. The great engineer Agostino Ramelli trained with Gian Giacomo, who instructed him in mathematics and architecture [1].

In 1543 he purchased the ancient fortified castle of Frascarolo in the Valceresio, which he converted into a sumptuous villa [2], and in the summer of 1545 he married Marzia Orsini, daughter of Ludovico Orsini, conte di Pitigliano. He was made a knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1555, also the year of his death. Il Medeghino is buried in the Duomo of Milan.

Since his only son, Camillo (died after 1586), was illegitimate, though made a Knight of the Order of Malta, Gian Giacomo's honors passed to his brother Agosto (1501 – 1570).